Yesterday I shared a poem I wrote called, The Dust https://nananoyz5forme.com/2020/01/14/the-dust/. It was inspired by memories of my childhood in Floydada, Texas, when the wild winds blew stinging dust into every little nook and cranny of my world. I hated the dust and the dry Texas winds. They drove me slightly mad. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
And as a young wife, I grew to hate the wind and dust even more when on two separate occasions the back door of our rental house in Dumas, Texas, blew open while Studly and I were at work. We came home to find inches of dust on our floors, our furnishings, and inside of our cabinets. I cleaned for days and still found dust where dust shouldn’t be. I cursed the dust.
When Studly and I moved away from the Texas panhandle I missed the family and friends we left behind, but never the wind and the dust. I could live there again if I had to, but I pray I’ll never have to.
While living in Illinois I joined an informal book club. We drank a lot of wine and sometimes even discussed the book we’d been assigned to read that month. One that made the biggest impact on me was The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.
The book chronicles the Dust Bowl era of the 1930’s through interviews with those who lived through that time. I knew every town mentioned in the book. And as awful as my memories of windy, dusty days were, they were nothing compared to the nightmare of the Dust Bowl years.
One lady in the book club complained that the book went on about the dust way too long. I countered with, “I think that was the point.”
If the author had glossed over even a bit of the despair caused by the weather conditions he’d have missed his mark. She also asked if anyone still lived there.
“Well, yes,” I said. “I have family and friends there along with hundreds of thousands of other hardy folks.”
“Unbelievable,” she said.
There is a lot of beauty in that part of the country–days so perfect, sunsets so gorgeous, you could almost cry. But I always remember the dust.
Peace, people.
Praying for Eyebrowz 
I think if you choose to live in areas like that, or anywhere really where geography and weather conditions often dictate your life, you must be an amazingly sturdy and pragmatic person to endure what comes at you
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Overwhelmingly the people in the plains are welcoming, open-hearted (if not always open minded 😏), and resilient.
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I saw a gut-wrenching documentary on the Dust Bowl some years ago. I still have vivid images.
I hate dust. I see it right now, all around me. I wish I could hire someone to come and take it away. Because I hate cleaning dust. Boo.
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I believe there’s a documentary based on the book. It is like something out of a nightmare. The best part of living in Florida is we have almost no dust.
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I take my hat off to you for living there and admire your remark about IF you had to do that again…. xzx
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Most of Studly’s family still lives there. Every time we visit we wonder how anyone does.
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Do you think they are just so used to it, they don’t notice?
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Most have never lived anywhere else, so it’s just life! I remember when I first realized I didn’t have to dust the furniture every other day when we moved to another state. Now in Florida I almost never have to dust. It’s like heaven.
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Yeah. i think if that is your horizon, that is your horizon. And it will be heaven not to have to dust.
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